Some people who reach their retirement years lose interest in community involvement. For Jan and Phyllis Wilson, however, it has been a time of intense efforts to make their hometown a more attractive place to live and work.

Fifteen years ago, the couple created a nonprofit organization they named Pride in Community Appearance. It has become widely known simply by its acronym – PICA.

The Wilsons have spent the last decade and a half mobilizing volunteers to undertake assorted projects that improve the appearance of the city through landscaping, gardening and related projects. That effort has been highly successful.

“We continually interest more people,” Jan Wilson told The Messenger last week. “We are now averaging at least 25 people every Tuesday and Thursday between Earth Day, which is April 22, and then it goes till the first of November.”

On those two days each week, PICA meets from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and its volunteers are assigned to work at various venues.

Recent locations that have gotten PICA’s loving attention include the Fort Dodge Municipal Building, the intersection of First Avenue North and Ninth Street, the intersection of First Avenue North and Eighth Street, the Fort Dodge Public Library and Veterans Park, located at Central Avenue and 12th Street. Some of PICA’s other projects have included painting the gazebo near the library, planting a flower bed behind Fort Dodge Senior High on Martin Luther King Drive and planting trees on 32nd Street. The list of its worthy endeavors is already a long one and keeps getting longer.

Each year this remarkable group tackles projects that make our town a more beautiful place to live, work or visit. In PICA, the Wilsons have created an organization that is a superb example of what motivated volunteers can accomplish.

The Messenger congratulates Jan and Phyllis Wilson and the many PICA supporters on reaching this 15th anniversary milestone. We applaud your work and urge other Fort Dodgers to come forward and help keep this important community betterment initiative thriving far into the future.